Product Information

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Format: DRM Protected ePubVendor: ZondervanPublication Date: 2010

ISBN: 9780310576242ISBN-13: 9780310576242UPC: 025986576240

Publisher's Description

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What is happening to the church in America today? By all appearances, it looks like we are doing church better than we ever have. Our programs are effective, our pastors are relevant, and our buildings are increasing in size. In the past 30 years the number of mega-churches has increased from under 100 to over 7,500. In the past 10 years the number of multi-site churches has increased from under 100 to over 2,000. By the numbers, these church movements enjoy the national platform, the national voice, and the resources to profoundly impact the Kingdom. But to what end? In spite of the rapid growth of these prevailing church movements we are still losing ground, and the church in the west is in massive decline. Numerous studies and books have been written documenting the flight of members from the institutional church. Yet the local church is Jesus plan for reaching the world. The strength of the mega-church and multi-site models can be found in a strong emphasis on attracting people to the church, where they have an opportunity to encounter Jesus Christ. Yet many younger leaders are rejecting this model in favor of a more incarnational approach to ministry. These missional communities tend to focus their attention on trying to release people into ministry.In recent years a growing schism has emerged between those calling themselves incarnational leaders and those leading the prevailing church models. But what if we were able to incorporate the insights of both models into a cohesive understanding of the church? Can we bring together the very best of the attractional AND missional models for church ministry?What is needed is not is another book about how to do church better. Our focus on the form church is misguided when the vast majority of unchurched Christians and non-believers arent moving toward any form of church. Beautifully Sent will give permission for leaders to value existing church forms while catalyzing a missional movement of incarnational people into the world.

Author Bio

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Hugh Halter is the national director of Missio, serving as a mentor to a global network of missional leaders and church planters. He is lead architect of Adullam, a congregational network of missional communities in Denver, Colorado (www.adullamdenver.com), and is the coauthor of The Tangible Kingdom with Matt Smay.
Matt Smay serves as the director of the Missional Church Apprenticeship Practicum for Missio, where he works directly with church planters and existing church pastors as a mentor, coach, and consultant, and he is also a leader of Adullam. Matt lives near Denver, Colorado, with his wife, Maren, and daughter, Maegan. He is an avid golfer, loves mountain biking and fly-fishing, and enjoys the outdoors with his family.

AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church is a great follow up to Tangible Kingdom.

In their book AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church, Hugh Halter and Matt Smay address the balance that every church must strike between gathering together and scattering outward into the world in mission. While the church is supposed to meet together in corporate fellowship, congregants are also supposed to be scattered. The church is supposed to be missional and leave the corporate gathering and fellowship for going out in mission.

Simply put, the church is supposed to both gather and scatter. The church has left the building. The church is more than a building that we go to. We are the church, and as the church, we must not only gather together, but we must also go out into the world in mission.

AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church is an excellent book to balance out mission and fellowship, the gathering and the scattering.

AND helps define a path to authentic community and mission no matter where you currently worship. By building on the strengths of attractional churches, rather than casting them as irrelevant or worse, a barrier, the authors give a vision to the millions who want to be missional but not at the sake of their church homes and friends.

This book deals with the gather church AND the scattered church meaning a churches that come together for worship and the church that goes into all the world to preach the gospel to everyone. This book is also about how a church, no matter what size it is, needs to move away from the attractional-missional divide that has many church leaders divided as to what a church needs to be. One of my favorite chapters in the book is the chapter on being a consumerless church. This chapter really deals with how people in the church has become all about them. People jump for church to church because it is not what they want. I love this quote, "As leaders in his church, we must get back to the Main Thing and call ourselves and our people to Christ, the one who calls us to stop consuming and start bearing fruit for the kingdom of God" (Page 78).